


a royal flush

by verity



Series: tween wolf [28]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Card Games, Gen, Party, Strip Poker, Swimming Pools, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-13
Updated: 2013-05-13
Packaged: 2017-12-11 17:23:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/801224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/pseuds/verity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before Kate, before the fire, Derek went to one or two parties in high school. This one's pretty much the way he remembers: completely boring unless you're wasted, which Derek is decidedly not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a royal flush

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blue_rocket_frost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_rocket_frost/gifts), [whiskey_in_tea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskey_in_tea/gifts).



> thanks to Ashe, Clio, and Scout for ever-so-patiently fielding my questions about beer. (I rarely drink beer and most of my beer-drinking friends are Team Microbrews, so…)
> 
> everything I know about bridge, I learned from the internet.
> 
> ALSO, there is now apocryphal Laura/Daphne fic that lives [over here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/783195). You don't need it to follow what's going on in tween wolf, though.

Daphne texts him while he's finishing up his last round of deliveries for the day, waiting with a smile while Mrs. Oliver signs for her package from Walmart.com. _Forced to babysit hordes of binge-drinking teenagers so they don't drown in the pool. Bring decent beer._

"You look like someone died," Avik says when he brings the truck in.

"I have to chaperone a party," Derek says. "Worse."

—

There are a lot of things that Derek likes about his job, and only one of them is that none of his co-workers seem to remember the fire or the trial after, don't look guilty every time they complain about their parents or crazy ex-girlfriends. Samantha moved here from Redding two years ago, but Avik grew up two towns over and went to Meadow Vista High, which has maintained a devout if one-sided lacrosse rivalry with BHHS for the past thirty years, so there's no explanation there. Derek doesn't look this gift horse in the mouth before he capitalizes on the collective amnesia. In the absence of _Derek Hale_ , Derek can be the asshole who's always on time for work and the saint who'll cover for anyone on a moment's notice. He can joke about tragedy like it's nothing and flirt with senior citizens and—it's a good job, that's all.

He picks up some Corona and a few limes at Safeway; off-duty, he's a different kind of asshole.

—

Daphne's sitting in a wicker chair on the back porch when Derek gets to her house and the early stirrings of the pool party. She has a crumpled bag of Cheetos on the table next to her and her phone in hand. "Oh, no, you didn't," she says when she looks up. "No, no, no."

Holding out the Corona, Derek grins at her.

Daphne refuses to take the beer, so he drops the bottles into her lap. And the limes. "That's frat beer," she says, leaning back against the chair as if that will somehow put her farther away from it. "Why would you do this to me, Derek?"

"You had sex on the couch," Derek says. "It's a new couch. I bought that couch from IKEA, I drove it up from Sacramento, I _assembled_ it—"

One of the limes rolls off onto the slate tile. "Yes, because I made the coffee table wobble—"

Derek sighs. "The couch smells."

"No, it doesn't." Daphne glares at him for a moment before her shoulders droop. "Is it weird?"

What's weird is that Derek came back to the house afterward, opened the front door, and something in his chest went all tight and warm at the smells of _pack_ and _home_ greeting his nose. For a long moment, it was just—overwhelming, joyful—before he started picking out individual scents and came up with _my alpha and my packsister had sex on the couch_ , and then he couldn't look Laura in the face for two days. Normally, he'd tell Daphne about something like this, and she'd tell him to pin it on his Derek Hale Can't Have Nice Things bulletin board, but—he can't.

So he bought her shitty beer.

"It's a little weird," Derek says, bending to pick up the lime still teetering on the tile. "But it's—it's cool with me."

Daphne smiles, just a little uptick at the corner of her mouth.

"You need to work on your bend-and-snap, Hale," says a sharp voice next him. Daphne's sister reaches over and snags the Coronas, then the limes, from Daphne. "I'm confiscating these. Thanks for your contribution."

"A great loss to the entire democratic world!" Daphne shouts at Lydia's retreating back.

"Do you want me to get real beer?" Derek's still crouched on the ground with the last lime in his hand. "Or I could—"

"I should probably stay sober," Daphne says. "If you start mixing me G&Ts that's a one-way trip to alcohol poisoning and drowning for everyone else."

—

Before Kate, before the fire, Derek went to one or two parties in high school. This one's pretty much the way he remembers: completely boring unless you're wasted, which Derek is decidedly not.

Lydia's mingling with the commoners in her tiny red bikini, Ken Doll boyfriend in tow, while Scott and a tall, curly-haired guy Derek doesn't recognize flip burgers on the grill. The pool is full of teenagers play-fighting with foam noodles and floating on rafts with cans of Miller Lite in hand, ringed with kids dipping their toes in the water while they sip from plastic cups. Even Stiles is here, sitting at the foot of a shy girl who's wearing sunglasses and actual clothes, arguing with Scott about the correct way to cook a hot dog.

Derek and Daphne are cross-legged on the floor by the French doors, facing off over a deck of cards. They played five rounds of War before they switched to strip poker.

"This is an unfair game," Derek says, because he's shirtless and shoeless and also missing his watch.

"You're a werewolf, you should be able to tell when I'm bullshitting you." Daphne's down flip-flops and a few bracelets, but she's still fully dressed. "Come on, fold or put your chips in, by which I mean, socks next, bucko."

Daphne has a royal flush.

—

When the sun goes down, Lydia dispatches Scott and one of their friends—Allison—to light tiki torches and turn up the volume on the stereo. Ken Doll and one of the lacrosse jocks are going at each other with duct-taped stacks of beer cans, but the rest of the crowd is starting to get mellow, dancing on the patio or lounging by the water.

Stiles comes over to their corner after a while, pushing his friend in front of him. "Hey, want to play bridge before Derek has to get naked?"

"No," Daphne says, narrowing her eyes; she's down to her bra and denim shorts.

Derek plucks at the black cotton knit of his boxers. At least he's not wearing something embarrassing. "I don't know how to play bridge."

"This is Erica," Stiles continues. "She can't drink, but I have it on good authority that she's very talented at bridge. I am both a designated driver and a passable bridge partner."

Erica is looking at her sneakered feet; unlike everyone else at this party, she's still covered up, wearing a loose t-shirt over jeans. She smells uncomfortable and sad beneath her sunscreen. "Yeah, okay," Derek says with a quick glance at Daphne. "I'm done with playing naked chicken. You win."

Daphne drops her cards on the tile and whoops. "I'm impressed you held out this long," she says, reaching for her shirt. "Last time you called it way earlier."

"I've grown as a person," Derek says. He shimmies into his shorts. "How are we doing this? Is it you and me versus these kids?"

Stiles drops down next to Daphne. "Hey, I resent that," he says. "Anyway, it should be me and Daphne—you're okay, right?—versus you and Erica, because you don't know what you're doing and Erica could take us all."

"It's a partnered game," Erica says, lowering herself to the ground. She ventures a small smile. "I couldn't do it by _myself_. I just—I used to play with my grandma a lot, that's all."

"Grandmas," Stiles says with a sigh.

—

Bridge seems to involve a lot of contracts and bids and tricks and generally sounds like some construction-job sex-work porn that Derek has definitely never watched. Erica does a decent job explaining before they move into their compass point positions, though, and she's a cutthroat player. As their game goes on, she relaxes, stops glancing back self-consciously at the party around them. They're gaining ground when Stiles abruptly sits up straight and says, "Fuck," looking over at the group of kids clustered by the pool.

"What?" Daphne says, frowning.

Derek doesn't have time to respond before the fear begins to inch up in his lungs like water.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [ladyofthelog](http://ladyofthelog.tumblr.com) on tumblr.
> 
> Daphne is [coldorcolder](http://coldorcolder.tumblr.com) on tumblr. She updates twice a day.


End file.
